A Public Servant Takes His Message to the Stage

By PHOEBE HOBAN

Published: February 18, 2006

Peter Goldmark has frequently found his way into the limelight. Throughout his 35-year career in public service he has played leading roles in local, national and international arenas. But for the next month or so, his efforts will be performed on a much smaller stage, one with an actual box office and a paying audience. The Old Arizona theater in Minneapolis is presenting ''The Trial of Osama bin Laden,'' a play that Mr. Goldmark wrote with Mark Gerzon, a longtime friend and collaborator.

Like many of Mr. Goldmark's other projects, this one is meant to stimulate public dialogue -- and perhaps prod public policy.

''I'd lived the moment of the attack of 9/11 a hundred times,'' Mr. Goldmark, 65, said recently over lunch in the Flatiron district, not far from his office at the nonprofit Environmental Defense. Dressed in a denim shirt and blue jeans, Mr. Goldmark, who has written, though not published, reams of poetry and one novel, explained the play's genesis.

As executive director of the Port Authority from 1977 to 1985, he said, ''I knew the terrorist groups were planning to go for the iconic targets.'' He continued: ''I was running the biggest group of iconic targets in the United States. The George Washington Bridge, Kennedy Airport -- these are the things terrorists spend their lives obsessing about.''

Indeed, Mr. Goldmark predicted the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center: in 1984, he created an antiterrorist task force that pinpointed the vulnerability of the public parking space under the Trade Center, even mentioning the possibility of a vehicle loaded with explosives. Last October, that report was the pivotal evidence in a successful civil trial against the Port Authority charging negligence. (The authority is appealing.) Mr. Goldmark testified in court, choking up on the witness stand.

''What even my friends don't understand is that it was really difficult,'' he said. ''They don't understand that when you are a professional and have led an agency, it's not easy to get up and say things the burden of which runs counter to the agency you led.''

His connection to 9/11 was also personal: Mr. Goldmark's daughter, Karin, his son-in-law, Andrew, and his granddaughter, Magdalen, lived four blocks from the World Trade Center.

As a public policy innovator, Mr. Goldmark has always been a maverick. In the 1960's, he was assistant budget director and then chief of staff in Mayor John V. Lindsay's cabinet. In the 1970's, he worked for Gov. Hugh L. Carey as New York state budget director. Mr. Goldmark has also run a major nonprofit organization: from 1988 to 1997, he was president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

There was the occasional foray into the private sector. From 1985 to 1988, he was senior vice president of the Times Mirror Company, a media conglomerate. His second stint in journalism took him to Paris in 1998 as the chairman and chief executive of The International Herald Tribune, a post that was eliminated in 2003 when The New York Times bought out the paper's co-owner, The Washington Post.

In 2002, Mr. Goldmark found himself writing pages about a judge, a defendant and a prosecutor. A few months later, he was having lunch with Mr. Gerzon, who runs the Mediators Foundation, an organization that fosters global leadership. By coincidence, Mr. Gerzon said he had been writing a play about the trial of Osama bin Laden and suggested they collaborate. ''And I said, 'Bingo,' '' Mr. Goldmark said.

The artistic gambit is not that surprising, said John Isaacson, who worked with him when Mr. Goldmark was secretary of human services in Massachusetts. ''Peter is both endlessly intellectually curious and has the ability to look around corners without a periscope, and he's mischievous, and the combination is likely to show up in all sorts of odd guises,'' he said.

The seriousness of the play doesn't leave much room for the kind of outrageous humor that is a notorious Goldmark tic. (He once dressed up as a waiter to serve the board of commissioners at the Port Authority -- none of whom recognized him -- and has stolen stationery from high-ranking officials, including at least one vice president.)

Nor is ''The Trial of Osama bin Laden'' subtle. Mr. bin Laden is in prison, represented by both a loyal friend and a liberal defense lawyer who is a child of Holocaust survivors. Before long, the terrorist is bonding, against his will, with the lawyer, who then decides to introduce her daughter to the defendant. The director and audience are part of the action. Without giving away the plot, which is at times shocking, ''Trial'' has two endings: a worst-case scenario and one that is considerably more optimistic.

As a theater experience, the play isn't exactly Ibsen. As Mr. Gerzon puts it: ''It's not a play you put ribbon around and say, 'What a great piece of art.' It's a play that's supposed to catalyze civic debate.''

For Mr. Goldmark, writing it was yet another way to spark public awareness and action. ''One of the things I felt very much is that Americans who are really concerned about terrorism have no venue for reflection or dialogue,'' he said. ''People are absolutely hungry to think about these issues. After 9/11 there was a sort of numbness, accompanied by a frenzied patriotic rallying and little thought. I want to help Americans understand, and be strong enough and bold enough to demand wise things from their government.''

Photo: Charles Hubbell, Nora Epp and Jennifer Blagen, standing, in ''The Trial of Osama bin Laden,'' playing at Old Arizona theater in Minneapolis. (Photo by Dawn Villella for The New York Times)